6. Chickens!
Rescuing four chickens and creating space for them in our garden.
Design framework: OBREDIMET
Observe, Boundaries, Resources, Evaluation, Decisions, Implementation, Maintenance, Evaluation, Tweak
Dates
May 2018 - November 2018
So this design process is not about deciding whether chickens are a good idea. I'm afraid I decided that a long time ago and have been working towards it ever since. As planned, our new house is extremely suitable for chicken keeping, and therefore this design focuses on the siting of their house, sourcing of their food, and other practicalities.
Our new house is very rural. We are two miles from the nearest village, and there are only three houses within half a mile of us. We have eleven acres of land. Space is not an issue, nor are we likely to annoy our neighbours (two of them have their own chickens anyway).
We moved at the end of February, and decided to have 2018 as an observation year without making major changes. We planted annual veg and let the dairy farmer next door graze his cows on our fields. In April, we received a message that a charity was looking for homes for chickens from commercial farms, and while we were tempted, we just did not feel ready. Instead, we spent several more months observing our site and carrying out the design process.
We observed how we used the space throughout the spring and summer, and I noticed that I spent a lot of my time in the larger garden area which isn't directly next to the house. This is where the washing line is, near to the compost bins and the greenhouse.
We agreed that it was very likely to be me who did the majority of the day to day chicken care tasks, but that Peter (my partner) was available for big jobs and construction work.
My major boundary is a lack of animal experience. I had pets as a child (cats, dogs and gerbils), but took no real responsibility for them. As an adult, I have not been solely responsible for anyone or anything other than myself. I am quite daunted by the prospect of having chickens to care for.
Our other main boundary is predators, namely foxes. We have only seen two foxes since we moved here, but one of our neighbours kept chickens for years and many of them were eaten.
I work full time, and while I do sometimes work at home, and am usually around at the start and end of the day, I am not usually around all day every day. I would rather the chickens weren't roaming free when I wasn't here because of the risk of predators.
We have so far in our lives been fortunate to be able to go away for a night without being concerned about anyone other than ourselves. We don't do this often, but we would like the opportunity to be there if we choose. This means designing our chicken set up to be able to cope without us for 24 hours.
Space
We have eleven acres of fields and no near neighbours. The chickens will have plenty of opportunity to roam free when we are at home. We have plenty of space to store bedding and food, meaning these can be ordered in larger quantities. We also have plenty of space to compost bedding once it has been used.
We are fortunate enough to have enough space to create a chicken forage area in the future by planting trees and shrubs that will drop seeds and leaves that chickens like to eat. This will supplement their diet and hopefully keep them healthy. This is a longer term plan and not included as part of this initial design at this time.
Recycled materials and tools
We have quite a bit of wood, wire mesh etc lying around which we intended to use to build our hen house and run. Peter is an accomplished scavenger and we can make full use of Freegle and Gumtree to acquire local materials that are being given away.
We are also reasonably skilled at building things from recycled materials. and have plenty of tools to complete the project.
Some knowledge, skills and tools
We have spent time chicken-sitting while friends were on holiday, and I have been on a chicken keeping course. We have many books about chickens, and are members of chicken-related forums so have a community of people to ask questions should we need to.
Money
Chickens are relatively cheap to keep, and we already have most of the materials to build their house and run, but there will still be some set up costs and ongoing outlays. We have money available for these.
Endless appetite for eggs!
We are enthusiastic about eggs and are confident that we will be able to keep up with eating the eggs from our chickens without too much trouble, with frequent gifts to friends.
I considered the design in the light of the three permaculture ethics, and created a list of functions, systems and elements to include in the design.
Earth care
We plan to acquire our chickens through a charity (the British Hen Welfare Trust) which rehomes chickens that have come to the end of their productive lives in commercial farms. This way, chickens that would otherwise be slaughtered for pet food will have a happy free range retirement.
We intend to use recycled materials to make the hen house and run. We will compost the bedding, and use the chickens to help us with pest control in the garden (while being aware of their destructive tendencies!).
We plan to be mindful of where we source their food and bedding from.
People care
I will primarily responsible for the day to day care of the chickens. I do get up reasonably early, but I don't want to be tied to getting up too early every day. The chickens will also need to be able to stay in their run while I am at work each day.
Fair shares
We hope to have a surplus of eggs to share with friends, and hope they will get as much pleasure out of hanging around with the chickens as we will.
Functions |
Systems |
Elements |
Cheerfulness! |
Free range |
Some free ranging Chickens trained to return when I call |
Food for us |
|
Chickens will produce eggs (hopefully!) |
Food for chickens |
Bought food |
Chicken food Corn |
Forage |
Chicken forage area |
|
Fertility for soil |
Free range |
Chickens have access to free range in garden |
Compost |
Chicken bedding and droppings added to normal compost |
|
Pest control |
Controlled movement |
Chicken tractor Moveable fencing Supervised free range |
Chicken safety |
Secure housing |
Run eight foot high with mesh dug into ground Solid chicken house |
Daily routine |
Shut into run well before dusk Not let out if foggy |
Thinking about permaculture principles helped us to make decisions.
Produce no waste: we have been collecting wood and other materials, and plan to make as much of the chicken house and run from these as we can. We also plan to use all the yields we can from the chickens themselves - eggs, manure, used bedding for compost, and weeding activities.
Use small and slow solutions: we have little experience of chickens, and have never had pets as adults ourselves. We will start with a small number of chickens and a relatively straightforward system, and change incrementally as we learn about their behaviour.
Integrate rather than segregate: It would be useful to have the chicken run near the vegetable garden, and near to the compost for raking out bedding. It also needs to be quite close to the house to ensure we visit regularly.
Creatively use and respond to change: We plan to adapt as we learn more about keeping chickens and are open minded about what our chicken keeping will look like in the future.
I spent a long time deliberating over where to put the run. Using McHarg's exclusion zone process, I dismissed places which
- were on hard standing rather than soil
- were too close to a public footpath
- were in a field rather than the garden (which would limit the use of the field for other things)
- were not within easy reach of the house
This left us with two options: (a) very close to the house, near the living room window; and (b) in the bigger garden area on the other side of the drive. Both of these areas are within the 'garden area', identified on the first map below. The second map below shows the two options we selected within the garden area. This is followed by photographs of each option, and a PMI analysis showing the positive, negative and interesting elements of each choice.
|
Plus |
Minus |
Interesting |
A. Near living room window |
Chickens visible from house Close to house – more convenient in
bad weather Sheltered under trees |
Will it smell under the living room
window? Will it attract rats? Limited sunlight |
Run would have to be covered and low
to the ground to avoid blocking the window We rarely use the door from the living
room to outside |
B. In garden |
Much more space Could build run tall enough to stand
up in – easier to clean Could see hens while pottering in the
garden |
Slightly further away from house No storage for bedding or food close
by |
This spot has a good view – could we
use it for anything else? |
We also chose to make the run completely fox proof - eight foot tall with a skirt of wire dug into the ground. The hens might be at risk while free ranging (a risk we were willing to take) but we wanted to be able to shut them in the run while we were out and know they were safe (although sadly this did not prove to be the case - see below).
We had originally made some sketches of how the chicken house and run would look (see two pictures below), but decided to first gather materials we had, and see what we could make from them, so we ended up with something quite different.
For the hen house, we re-purposed two doors and the front off an old rabbit hutch I'd acquired from the local tip. We did have to buy some wood for uprights, but our spending was helpfully limited by using what was lying around (and yes, we are lucky that there were various bits of farm debris around when we bought our house).
We built the run in panels, so theoretically it will be relatively easy to remove a panel if we want to add an extension in the future.
December 2018 and January 2019
The onset of wintry weather required a few more tweaks, as we found ourselves trying to create cosy shelter for them in our relatively exposed garden during the snow.
Then, in late February 2019, disaster struck.
February 2019
I opened the coop one morning to find Hermione and Luna dead, and Mildred and Maud just standing in a corner, not moving. There were a few spots of blood, but no signs of forced entry - the run was intact, as was the house itself, the door of which I'd just unlocked. I took Mildred and Maud into the house and ran back out to discover the culprit feasting - the beautiful white stoat I'd spotted running through the garden a few days previously.
It was the only explanation I could see - the stoat could easily have got through the bars of the run, and must have squeezed through the air vent of the chicken house, which was about an inch high.
It had never occurred to us to protect against stoats - all our efforts had been focused on foxes, with an eight foot high run with mesh dug into the ground all the way round. Stoats are known for taking eggs, and sometimes chicks (which we don't have), but even the local farmers have never known one to attack a full grown chicken. I can only assume it sneaked into the hen house in search of eggs, and found itself in the dark confronted by angry claws, and lashed out before making its escape.
After a trip to the vet to confirm they were not physically injured, Mildred and Maud came to live in the Chicken Rehabilitation Ward (previously known as my study) for a few weeks while they recovered and we figured out what to do.
Mildred and Maud slowly regained their confidence and watched our progress with interest. They seemed happy to be hanging around in their run, and even investigated the chicken house - we'd been worried they wouldn't want to go back into it.
Purpose: to design the siting of the chicken run and other practicalities
The siting of the chicken run is perfect. It's in a relatively sheltered corner of an exposed garden, and with two sides solid at ground level, there is protection from the wind - even more so now we have added windows round some of the other two sides. We are happy that they have enough space if we have to shut them in there all day.
The run is close enough to the house that it's easy to pop up there a couple of times a day, and the chickens spend a lot of time hanging round in the garden near the house anyway. Their run is in the main vegetable garden, and they do a good job of keeping down the weeds (and occasionally the seedlings - a tweak for another design). We're slowly making incremental changes to our daily and weekly routines - for example we bought small metal bins to keep a few days worth of food and corn in our house, to save me going to an outbuilding every day to collect more.
Food for us
Our chickens have laid regularly since we got them - we had four eggs (from four chickens) on the first morning they were here. For a few weeks from late December to late March I tracked how many eggs they produced - a total of 80 in January, and we even had 53 in February, not too bad considering Hermione and Luna were killed on the 5th and we didn't get our three new ladies until the 24th. I haven't consistently tracked since then, but we regularly get 2-3 eggs a day from our five chickens.
This has started tailing off recently though (September 2019). They are moulting, and Mildred and Maud were part of our first batch so we've had them over a year now, meaning they're getting older. We regularly have soft shelled eggs. But we're fine with this lower productivity - we still have plenty of eggs for our own use and it just means we give fewer away (we were giving away 12-18 a week at one point).
Food for chickens
We buy most of our hen supplies from the British Hen Welfare Trust - the same place we got the chickens. We do have an agricultural supplies shop about ten miles away, but they don't deliver, and aren't open on a Sunday or in the evening, which makes collection inconvenient.
Our main supplies are:
- Layers Pellets- 20kg bag every 2 months (approx cost £8.50/month)
- Organic mixed corn - 20kg bag every 2-3 months (approx cost £7-8/month)
- Bedding - 100 litre bag every 3 months (approx cost £6.70/month)
At £20-£25 a month (not including worming treatment and other supplies) this is not exactly a cheap way of acquiring eggs! But it's a relatively productive way of keeping pets.
We do notice that they get through a lot more food when they are shut in the run for the whole day. This means that when they are free ranging (which is most of the time), they must be foraging for a considerable amount of their own food, which is great. We have also recently started experimenting with giving them less corn. We give it to them as a treat in the evening, but we'd also been using it for bribing them to get out of the house, or out of the way of the car, or just generally as a little treat when we went outside, and they've come to expect it and hang around the back door half the time. We're experimenting with keeping it for evening treats (ok, and a little bit of bribery). They do get other treats as well so they're not exactly deprived.
Fertility
We pick the poo out of their house each morning and add it to the compost. At the end of the week, we remove the bedding from the house and spread it on the floor of the run, and replace it with new. After a few weeks, we rake the accumulated bedding from the floor of the run and add that to the compost too, and start again. The chickens have access to the compost heap and spend happy hours raking through it, and we find that any food we place in there rots down really quickly. It would probably be more efficient if it was in bays rather than a big pile being spread around the corner of a field, but that's a design for another day...
Pest control
I'm not convinced the chickens are much good at this. They've kept the weeds down in some of the raised beds - but at the expense of some of the plants. I'm learning that plants need to be much bigger before we plant them out, or the chickens need to be fenced out until they've grown. I've not seen evidence of them eating any creatures other than worms and daddy long legs, although one did have a go at a snail once. This week we spotted a mouse in their run one evening, so I suspect they have overall increased the 'pest' numbers rather than reduced them. Oh well.
Chicken safety
We had assumed that our hens would be in most danger while free ranging during the day, and took steps against a fox attack by making sure their run was fox proof, and that they were shut in it well before dusk, and if it was foggy. We hadn't anticipated any other predators - I'd never seen it written anywhere that a stoat would attack a full grown chicken, and the local farmers all seemed surprised too as they'd never known it either. Since searching specifically for it, I've found examples, but it does seem rare. I'm happy that the alterations we have made to the run (including getting rid of the original ventilation hole in the house and replacing it with a larger number of smaller holes, covered in mesh) will keep them safe while they're shut in there at least.
I spent a long time feeling like I'd failed with this design. We knew there were risks by having our chickens free ranging, but had not anticipated that they may be attacked overnight while they were 'safely' shut in their run. However, we're now confident that we've done all we can to prevent that happening again, and will just have to keep our fingers crossed.
Cheerfulness
We have very much taken to chicken keeping. It has put restrictions on our lives that we didn't have before, but we have gained so much from it. We have yields other than eggs, compost, and weeding functions too. Each evening we both take a cup of tea and sit in the run with the chickens as they settle down for the evening, which provides us with a nice bit of time unwinding together. We take regular breaks throughout the day to sit with them. We have spoilt them to the extent that we are now having to retrain them to NOT expect treats every time we go outside. Slowly, we're learning.
We have made some tweaks in relation to weather-proofing after last winter, but I would like to make more. The low internal roof works well, but it does mean I have to crouch to open the chicken house door, and to clean it out, which is not ideal. Over time I'd like to add a proper roof to the whole run (not just mesh) - we did buy plastic sheets for this but it was difficult to attach them and most of them have since been used for something else.
We've made other incremental changes to the chicken run too, as we learn more about them and their habits. For example we've recently added a perching area - they seem to love this and are often standing on it when they hear the car coming down the drive.
I'd also like to go on holiday next year, which means finding someone who will stay in our house and chicken sit, because I wouldn't be happy having them shut in the run for longer than a couple of days.
It was useful to use McHarg's exclusion zones and a PMI analysis to decide where to cite the chicken run, although it still did take us a while to choose between the two options. To a large extent this was because we had never kept chickens before, so had very little experience of the practicalities. We don't regret the decision of where to cite the run, although we have been tweaking some of the details as we're going along, particularly around making the run more weather-proof.
This has been one of my favourite designs to actually implement though, and the structure of permaculture design stopped us from rushing in and making decisions that might have been costly or inconvenient to change.